ute of James the First, _By cock_ and similar phrases were used, in
order to evade the charge of profaning the name of the Deity. It is of
particularly frequent occurrence in Skelton's _Magnyfycence_:--

"_Cr_[afty] _Con_[veyance]. Cockes armes, thou shalt kepe the brewhouse
boule.

_Fol_[ye]. But may I drynke thereof whylest that I stare?"

_Magnyfycence_ (Skelton's Works, ed. Dyce, i. 268).

But this writer seems to have employed it rather fantastically than from
any desire to soften the oath; for elsewhere in the same piece we find
_By God, Goddes fote_, &c. The practice of swearing had grown to such a
pitch in the time of Taylor the Water-Poet, that that writer says
(_Against Cursing and Swearing_, Works, 1630, i. 50):--"If the penalty
of twelve pence for every oath had been duly paid (as the statute hath
in that case provided) I doe verily beleeve that all the coyned money in
England would have been forfeited that way." Whitford, in his _Werke for
Housholders_, first printed about 1528 (edit. 1533, sign. c. ii et
seqq.), relates several remarkable judgments as having fallen, within
his personal knowledge, on profane swearers, who were as plentiful and
as reckless in the time of Henry VIII. as they were a century later.

+ _Of the wydowes daughter that was sent to the abbot with a couple of
capons._ xcvi.

+ There was an abbot that had a wydowe to his tenant, which wydow on a
tyme sent her doughter with a couple of capons to the abbotte. And whan
the mayden came with her present, she founde the abbot syttyng at dyner,
to whom she sayd: moch good dutte[280] the, my lorde! Ha! welcome,
mayden, quod he. My lorde (quod she), my mother hath sent the here a
couple of capons. God a mercy,[281] mayden, quod he. And so he made her
to be sette downe atte his owne table to eate some meate. Amonge other
meates, the abbotte had than a grene goose with sorell sauce, wherof he
dyd eate. So one, that sat at the abbottes tables, gaue the rompe of the
goose to the mayde to picke theron. She toke the rompe in her hande, and
bycause she sawe the abbot and other wete their meate in the sorell
sauce, she sayde: my lorde, I pray the gyue me leue to wete myn rompe in
thy grene sauce.

FOOTNOTES:

[280] Do it.

+ _Of the two men, that dranke a pynte of whyte wyne to gether._ xcvii.

+ There came two homely men of the countreye in to a tauerne on a tyme
to drinke a pynte of wine. So they satte stylle, and wyste not